Some Lessons from Madame Curie on Handling the Press and the Intelligence of Women

From Lion Hear Autographs:

 Polish-born French physicist [Marie Skłodowska-Curie ] discovered, along with her husband, Pierre, the elements radium and polonium. Winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics and the 1911 prize in chemistry... 

Following the outbreak of World War I, Curie aided the French army by equipping ambulances – which she accompanied to the front line – with portable x-ray apparatuses. The French Red Cross, then the Union de Femmes Françaises, made her the official head of its Radiological Service. As such, she created advanced courses in the medical uses of radiology and taught doctors new methods for locating foreign objects in the human body. Curie published her wartime notes as La radiologie et la guerre in 1920... 

[I]n 1920, during an interview with Marie Meloney, the editor of the American women’s magazine The Delineator, Curie expressed her desire for a second gram of radium in order to continue her valuable research. “Undeterred by the knowledge that a gram of radium costs about $100,000, almost overnight Meloney organized what she called the Marie Curie Radium Campaign to grant Marie’s wish. Through her many contacts, she put together a committee of wealthy American women and distinguished American scientists willing to promote the cause and to encourage American citizens to contribute toward it,” (Marie Curie: And the Science of Radioactivity, Pasachoff). Through a national subscription, the Marie Curie Radium Campaign raised the necessary funds, much coming from American women moved by Curie’s war efforts. Executive committee members included, Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, Mrs. Thomas Edison, Mrs. Herbert Hoover, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt.

In May 1921, Curie traveled to the United States to receive the gift. Meloney “arranged for the gram of radium that the campaign would buy to be handed to Marie at a White House reception given by the President of the United States himself… Meloney’s plan was based on the assumption that Marie would be willing to make a publicity tour of the United States. It was not easy for such a shy, private, and modest person to agree to this scheme of self-promotion, but Meloney was persuasive. Marie agreed to make the trip on one condition, that the American press must be muzzled. Not a word of the Langevin affair [her scandalous affair with a younger, married colleague] could appear in print. Meloney succeeded in charming promises out of every editor she approached, even editors of newspapers known for muckraking. From some she even managed to wheedle contributions to the Marie Curie Radium Fund, along with their pledge to suppress the Langevin story,”

The New York Tribune of May 12, 1921, carried a front page story about the historic arrival of Madame Curie in New York, “…Mme. Curie passed the afternoon resting and denied herself to all callers. Her only conversation with newspaper folk took place on board the Olympic as the vessel was steaming up the bay. She spoke in English, in a frank, unaffected manner. She was asked if she believed the mental equipment of women was equal to that of men. ‘Why do you speak of men and women?’ she retorted. ‘Why not speak of intelligent people and those not so intelligent? Some women are intelligent; some are not.’ ‘But do you think women in general – of course you are an exception, Madame,’ blundered the hapless questioner – ‘do you think women generally as capable of intellectual achievement as men?’ ‘I dislike,’ responded Madame, ‘to make any statement I can not prove.’